After weeks of frustration waiting for the van to be repaired, we were finally ready to launch. Jimmy and Deann delivered the van on Saturday morning. I spent all of Saturday finishing up two grants for the arts and balloon festivals.

I awoke on Sunday morning ready to load the van. I delivered our golden retriever to Ann's, Buffy’s favorite second home. Returning to the horses, I grabbed Jamie to show him how to feed the horses. At that point, I realized we were going to have one big delay. Upon uncovering the hay, I saw a great deal of it was about to go bad.

A few days previous, Steve and I had unloaded 50 bales of hay. We won the ugly stacks award that night. It was somewhat dark when we were unloading and the bales were looser than normal. We had just heave-hoed the last bale and I was climbing down the stack when I felt part of it release. I had to jump for the trailer while one side of our past hour's work collapsed into the trailer.

Exhaling dual sighs of resignation, we restacked the hay. Steve was attempting to throw one of the last bales to me when he lost his balance and fell out the back of the trailer. We were quite a pair that night.

Later that evening, a slow steady rain set in. I kept saying, “I need to go back and make sure I thoroughly covered the hay.” Steve kept saying, “It will be fine. It’s a gentle rain with little wind.”

The next morning, I found I should have followed my intuition. Stronger winds had completely blown off the tarp and I was faced with numerous soaked bales. I recovered the hay and hoped for the best.

My best hopes were simply not in the cards. Long rains were followed by hot afternoons and the tarp provided a perfect ferment for mildew. When I uncovered the hay to show Jamie, I had about fifteen bales going bad with the possibility of losing up to $500 worth of hay. I pulled Tarrik and Grange over with me and we started to pull apart bales and scatter the hay next to the trees. Wondering what was taking us so long, Kira rode her bike over and helped pull apart the bales while Tarrik raked the hay and Grange removed the bad hay to a separate pile; so much for an early start.

After three hours of wrestling hay (although the kids did have fun jumping in the loose hay), we returned to the house. The kids and I finished laundry and cleaning. I have this thing about leaving on a trip with the house dirty. Kira and Grange are terrific helpers so while they straightened the house, I organized all of our trip items. I learned from our previous adventure that a number of things could be left behind. It was nice to have more room in the van.

Later that afternoon, we were finally ready to depart. It’s like I told our buddy, Art, earlier that day, "I don’t care if we spend the night in Aneth, as long as we are on the road again!"

Durango was our destination. I found after hitting the deer, I was paranoid about hitting more. The repair bill was sobering. Steve laughed when I told him we had only made it to Durango. As it turns out, it was the perfect location to launch our next adventure.